Hi, here's a thread for evolution vs. intelligent design discussion

Malachi, while researchers have made great progress in understanding and replicating the chemical processes which form the basis of biological life, nothing in that article suggests they have even remotely resulted in life itself. In this arena, science's only leg up on faith is the continued willingness to doubt, and to keep looking.

As such, when it comes to the origins of life, the random amino acid soup hypothesis can only be given more credence than the intelligent creator hypothesis if people are willing to admit that's all that it is. It should not be taught as "fact" in schools, as it was to me.

My apologies as the linked article was but a fragment of the relevant corpus and contained references to other works which in turn cite other works. My apologies for not making it more clear that I picked that link as convenience and that it represented a tiny fragment of the work done and discoveries made in the field of spontaneous self-assembly of biotic molecules.

I'l be happy to provide a more complete bibliography if you actually wish to read them.

There is one pretty busy little polypeptide (one of the RNA transcriptases, if memory serves) that is largish (30+ peptides), active (is present in most species' somatic cells and constantly transcribing) and practically falls together automatically when the right peptides are present. Note also, that what a few dozen researchers can perform in a few litres of lab space in a decade pales in comparison to what can occur in a primoridal ocean of roughly 10^13 cubic kilometers over about 1 billion years.

This is a poorly framed argument. Science doesn't suggest that life was created from "scratch". Only creation myths do that.

Name one.

Malachi, that was a brilliant way to put that!

Don't forget the eye that is built inside out with the cones and rods buried under blood vessels and tissue.

(1) Comparing religion and science is like comparing Buicks with head lice. One deals with faith, one deals with material knowledge, and in no instance do they intersect, except in the minds of some people who have an agenda. Therefore, this whole debate is cooked up out of what people want to believe - and their beliefs are based on misconceptions about what science and religion really are, seek to do, and can explain. The only possible parallel is to recognize that like religion, science can never prove anything as true - because scientific "fact" is always subject to review for fallacy. But that's a meaningless and destructive comparison, because the methods are so difference - and the method is the meaning.

(2) I kinda like what the Mormons believe. Once upon a time, God was like a human, a member of a species that evolved from other species like apes. Mormon cosmology is probably the most evolution-friendly of all Christian religions, although most Mormons don't realize the implications of their own faith.

Kendra, perhaps where you went to school they were a bit more concerned about getting students to understand the scientific process itself. My education in junior high and high school about evolution was focused entirely on telling us that Darwinism was the truth, and gave the Miller-Urey experiments as evidence of this gospel. There were a few "alternative" theories thrown in later in high school in the textbook, such as Lamarckian adaptation and panspermia, but our teacher told us to ignore those since only a few kooks believed in any of that.

The irony of all the experimental work going on with regard to life precursors, is that if researchers ever succeed in generating and combining all the complex steps to go through and come up with a self-replicating form, they will have essentially demonstrated that yes, in fact, an intelligent being could create life.

That any science is taught as "fact" anywhere is an unfortunate error committed by teachers and science writers all the time. However, this also hinges on a definitional convenience that scientists often use which would be properly called "jargon".

Proper scientists will often use the word "fact" when referring to theories that are so well confirmed that proof of their falsehood, though would have to be accepted would so utterly change our understanding of the universe that it is convenient to accept them as essentially factual. Examples of theories that fit into this category of virtual facthood are "gravity exists", "the universe is very big", "the theories of relativity are valid", "continental drift occurs", "conservation laws of mass, energy, and angular momentum are correct", "the earth is older than 4000 years", "the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology is broadly true", etc. Note that even Francis Crick called his theory that I am loosely calling a "fact" a "dogma".

Linguistic conveniences in the natural sciences abound for much the same reason that contractions (e.g. can't, we're, etc.) do, simply because they are convenient. In another thread I spoke of what "plants want" which is similar shorthand as plants don't really "want" anything, but to replace that with the more accurate verbiage would be incredibly ponderous.

To cite Steven Gould (whom I hate citing because he had accidentally provided creationists with piles of "ammunition" in his effort to distinguish himself in his field, an error that he came later to regret) from his paper Evolution as Fact and Theory:

I think Intelligent Design could be proper to teach if the theories being taught actually used science (observation and experiments used to support theories). There are actual scientists that think they have found evidence for an intelligent design. There are times when scientific theories come into conflict with each other. You shouldn't exclude one set of scientific theories just because it contradicts the more sensible scientific theory.

I do agree the Bible and other religious texts have no place in any form of teaching science. The whole point of science is to not go to an authority for the answer. The whole point is to realize that what is written down and believed by others could be wrong. You take the evidence you can observe and shape your view around what you see and not what you read. If they can present ID without ever mentioning the bible or the Christian God (who has seen God that we don't consider crazy) they might be presenting something scientific. Unfortunately, I don't think that is the way the Christian public wants ID taught.

Yes. I only minored in Physical Anthro in college, so I won't presume to match that up with your highly detailed education in Junior High and High School.

For what it's worth, I could probably demonstrate that Bozo The Clown shits electrons out of his nostrils, but I wouldn't pass it off as hypothesis let alone Theory.

No Scientist posits that life began from nothingness.

That's not irony at all. Showing that it is possible for a human to create a self-reproducing organism would say that it was possible for a human to create a self-reproducing organism and would have absolutely zero implications on the proposition of the existence of god or the proposition of special creation of life by god.

Evolutionists reject the proposition of special creation of life not because they have an animosity toward god, but because they have a more parsimonious explanation of the origin of life that need not postulate a philosophically tricky uncreated creator. Furthermore, the researchers in abiogenesis are not doing their work in order prove or disprove the proposition of special creation; they are simply doing that work because it advances our understanding of gobs of biological processes. The only time I see research in abiogenesis and god discussed in the same conversation is in discourses like this; the researchers mostly don't give a damn about god but are fascinated with the operation of those complex molecules.

Indeed, if I had to place my bet, I expect the roboticists will develop self-replicating machines before any biologist does because a) robotics is way less subtle and tricky and b) roboticists are actively trying to make self-replicating machines.

Not entirely true - lightning has been run through what is thought to be the "primordial soup" of chemicals and compounds and it resulted in many of the basic building blocks of life.

That said, there's a difference between the origin of life - which we still don't have a real clue about - and the observable fact that lifeforms and species change over time, with the theory of evolution being the "best fit" explanation of why. So, sure, don't get into the murky waters that aren't really known.

To get back to the point before all the "my diploma is bigger than your diploma" stuff started:

Public schools in America do a wholly inadequate job of teaching the basics of scientific philosophy and method. This is what I was describing in relating my own school experience.

Despite its origin in the best universities and despite its attached words of qualification, the random lightning bolt story has no more evidence to it than the intelligent being story. In both cases we are talking about people casting about in the dark for answers. Some people choose to discard any hints of nonmaterial influence. Some people choose to discard any hints of doubt or the questioning process. But it's all just supposition. Offering up the intelligent being hypothesis alongside the lucky random chemical hypothesis isn't particularly harmful to anyone.

What's important is teaching people the skills of scientific inquiry.

Exactly so. Evolution isn't random, precisely - having certain pressures exert themselves on lifeforms and finding out the ones that happen to work really well in those conditions is about as random as the amazing fact that the ones to survive on the Titanic were mostly women and children. The random factor basically lies in which individual organisms hit it lucky in the genetic lottery and precisely how they do so.

Evolution isn't "survival of the fittest", it's "survival of that which fits".... and it's prone to not sanding away the bits that aren't actively harmful but don't help.

I will agree that public education needs to concentrate less on teaching kids to read and more on teaching kids to question what they read.

You began the "my diploma is bigger" arguemnt --so, yes I agree it's silly.

The "magic lightning bolt" hypothesis is always presented as a hypothesis unless the teacher is him/herself uneducated. In any event it is a hypothesis derived at from observable fact.

The "Intelligent Being" speculation is just that. Mere speculation based, not on observable fact, but on the supposition that "only God can make a tree".

While I appreciate such poetic musings from Joyce Kilmer, I don't entertain them as Science.

Well actually my point was that evolution is random. Evolution isn't an intelligence that decides that it is going to make an improvement that fits or survives. Evolution happens randomly and then survives based on a combination of the domination of the gene and the survivability of the creature until reproduction can occur. A creature could be a complete mess that dies within 24 hours, but if it manages to reporduce, feed, and multiply fast enough to overcome its shortcomings it will pass on its genes. "Mistakes" can survive very easily by simply existing in a creatures that have enough advantages to allow it to reproduce before death.

Were you intentionally ignoring my patient attempts to explain that "the random lightning bolt story" as being sufficient proof for anything is just plain incorrect regardless of what someone told you in high school? I was taught in pre-school that the bubbles left on a bar of soap after use were "germs" but that neither makes it true nor relevant.

It isn't just all supposition, quite the opposite, but your responses are too painfully obtuse to warrant yet another explanation.

Offering up ID as a credible rival to evolution has to be one of the most harmful if not the most harmful means to "teaching people the skills of scientific inquiry" that you seem to keenly desire yet sorely lack. ID is the antithesis of scientific inquiry and to seriously attempt to teach it would do more harm to pedagogy than has likely been seen before as it undermines the scientific method more effectively than frontal lobotomization.

Science is anything but opinion no matter how tenaciously you wish to believe so. Warning, categorical statement of dismissal follows: until such a time as you have read Dawkin's The Blind Watchmaker or perhaps the less readable Talk.Origins Archive and then wish to present your argument from personal incredulity you have no fucking idea what you are talking about and so can be reasonably ignored on the matter.

I just bought The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene last week from Amazon. Haven't started on them yet but definitely looking forward to them.

I wouldn't quite describe it quite like that. As scientific hypotheses gather more evidence, more observation, so they become hardened into perceived fact. Sometimes, very rarely, it turns out that something is wrong, and then it is a question of going back and starting again.

But certainly, if someone tries to tell me that the earth is not round, that we don't go round the sun, that the stars are not a very long way away, then I will call them a fool.

Creationists often gleefully point to the Piltdown hoax to discredit the scientific method, but in fact to me this validates it. It was proved to be a hoax because scientists are ultimately anxious to get to the truth.

Faith is one thing, and if people feel the need for it, then good luck to them. But when it happens that people believe something that from my perspective is irrational and then start dictating about which scientific discoveries are permissible, then I say they should be stopped.

You sound almost as bad as the religious zealots. For all your great wisdom, all you've done is replace irrational belief in an infallible deity with irrational belief an infallible ideal. Blind faith is bad no matter which side of the aisle you are on, and it's ideas such as yours, which are inculcated by universities throughout the world, which threaten to do the most harm. Students hold Science in such high esteem that they rarely question it, and seldom explore alternate theories. Though you can loftily declare the infallibility of the scientific method, the Piltdown incident proves that the pure wellspring of science can become tainted. However, fraud is only one of the many ways in which that font can become poisoned. There are more pernicious toxins floating in that water, and they all come back to basic human behavior. So-called fringe sciences are dismissed with extreme prejudice because prevailing scientific theory (and the egos of prevailing scientific giants) do not allow for the possibility that the fringe may be right. Ultimately, the truth is obscured and perturbed by the pretension of established scientists. This is not rare, as you suggest, but altogether too common. Science is not some lofty ideal. It is a base struggle for fame and glory which is beset by fraud and rife with inaccuracy.

Actually it is neither of those things. It's a methodology based on reason and observable phenomenon.

Well said, Sorrel. Closed-mindedness is a human trait, not a religious or a scientific one.

At any rate, having participated in a number of similar debates on these forums, I have come to learn that there isn't much point trying to defend the minority view. Closed minds aren't pried open in a venue such as this.

Except when you factor in that human beings are responsible for managing the empirical method.